SUNY Press Catalog - Spring 2009 - (Page 39) cultural studies THE WOUND AND THE WITNESS THE WOUND AND THE WITNESS THE BODY IN MEDICAL CULTUrE Elizabeth Klaver, editor Engages critically with historical and contemporary representations of the medicalized human body. How do concepts and constructions of the body shape people’s experiences of agency and objectification within medical culture? As an object of scrutiny, the medicalized body occupies center stage in the work of doctors, nurses, medical examiners, and other medical professionals who mediate broader cultural understandings of pathology, illness, and the various physical transformations associated with life and death. The Body in Medical Culture explores how the body functions within medical culture and examines the metaphors and models of the body used to understand medical phenomena, including disease, diagnostic practices, wellness, anatomy, surgery, and medical research. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines engage representations of bodies, including polio and masculinity, sex reassignment surgery, drug marketing, endography, “designer vaginas,” and hospital humor in order to challenge the normalcy of the passively objectified medicalized body. Elizabeth Klaver is Professor of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The Rhetoric of Torture Jennifer R. Ballengee Explores the rhetorical functions of torture and the witnessing of torture in both classical texts and contemporary contexts. The Wound and the Witness offers a historically grounded approach to an urgent contemporary problem: the persistence of torture in Western culture. Drawing upon ancient Greek and Roman texts, as well as contemporary media events, Jennifer R. Ballengee explores the spectacle of torture as a persuasive device. She suggests that both torture and the witnessing of torture are forms of polemical writing, carried out on the body. The analysis combines close reading and philological study with a materialist cultural approach to ancient Greek theater, early Christian accounts of martyrdom, and recent political controversies over the interrogation tactics in the U.S. government-run Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib prisons. By incorporating key classical texts by Sophocles, Achilles Tatius, and Prudentius, the author demonstrates how deeply the ancient literature resonates with contemporary issues of the body, rhetoric, and the spectacle of pain. Jennifer R. Ballengee THE RHETORIC OF TORTURE Jennifer R. Ballengee is Associate Professor of English and Director of Cultural Studies at Towson University. MArCH • 208 pp $65.00 jacketed hc 978-1-4384-2491-0 APrIL • 256 pp • 10 b/w photographs $24.95 pb 978-1-4384-2586-3 $74.50 hc 978-1-4384-2585-6 e 39 www.sunypress.edu e directtext dt CONTRiBUTORS Catherine Belling Northwestern U. Jennifer L. Croissant U. of AZ Catalina Florina Florescu Rutgers U. Lisa Gabbert UT State U. Hayley Mitchell Haugen OH U. Southern, Ironton Sally Hines U. of Leeds, UK Stephen Johnson U. of Toronto Elizabeth Klaver Southern IL U., Carbondale Natalia Lizama U. of Western Australia Hillary M. Nunn U. of Akron Alexa A. Priddy OR Attorney General’s Office, Eugene Antonio Salud II Milwaukee, WI Linda Seidel Truman State U. Sheena Sommers U. of Toronto P http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61769 http://www.sunypress.edu http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61785
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